


A Feather in the Stream

by misszeldasayre



Category: Mythic Quest: Raven's Banquet (TV)
Genre: F/M, Friends to Lovers, Friendship, Romance, post-Season 1
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-21
Updated: 2020-09-21
Packaged: 2021-03-07 17:21:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,426
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26571334
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/misszeldasayre/pseuds/misszeldasayre
Summary: After a long morning spent arguing with Ian, Poppy Li tries to escape the office in favor of the beach, but the last person she wants to see won’t leave her in peace.
Relationships: Ian Grimm & Poppy Li, Poppy Li/Ian Grimm
Comments: 8
Kudos: 32





	A Feather in the Stream

At the close of a particularly stressful workday, as Poppy buckles her laptop into her satchel and fantasizes about an ice cream sandwich dinner, Ian corners her in the doorway of their shared office, rambling about a string of words he needs her to hammer into a concept before the next patch release. By the time Poppy shoves past his wild gesticulations, it’s well into rush hour and the traffic takes twice as long to wade through until she reaches home.

Later that night, she sends him a strongly-worded email, explaining just what she thinks of his noodling and where he can shove it. She falls asleep, a scowl etching its way into her dreams.

A paintbrush appears on her desk the next morning, with a thin handle, thick bristles, and a barcode tag still plastered to the wood. She hears his praise again (“My favorite brush”) and hates the way it kindles something warm deep in her stomach. _Indistinguishable from his other favorite brushes_ , another voice whispers dismissively. It sounds awfully familiar, a phantom of his ex-wife from the diner parking lot.

By the time Ian charges into their office, too small a space for the two of them—the whole building too small for the two of them—Poppy has shoved her desk up against the far wall, screen turned from the door and headphones jammed over her ears as she types furiously in the corner of her own making. In the trash bin next to the door, the reconciliatory paintbrush rests atop a mountain of crumpled paper.

“Poppy,” he tries, but she pretends she can’t hear him over the drums wailing through her headphones. He calls her name again, plaintive and persuasive, almost enough to pull her from the ruse. But she steadily works the keys until he sets down his bag and wanders away. Probably in search of attention, Poppy sniffs, attention that Joe or David or some junior programmer will eagerly supply. She hates Ian for the way he pulls them into his orbit, for the way he calls for her but can’t wait until she comes around.

She works until her stomach growls, if angrily mashing buttons and cursing Michelle’s shoddy code counts as working. Usually for lunch, she devours leftovers carefully packaged in a brown sack, or grazes from the company snack wall if she can’t tear herself away from the game long enough to eat properly. There are always ice cream sandwiches stashed in the freezer if her sweet tooth acts up. Leaving the office during lunch would be impractical, with so much food stocked here and so much code to revise.

Today her path to the freezer deviates. Poppy finds herself swinging open David’s office door and hollering at him, caught mid-bite through his turkey sandwich, that she’s heading out for food. He mumbles a protest, or maybe permission, around the bread; she dashes from his office and boards the elevator before he can swallow. The elevator doors almost slide shut, but catch on an intruding foot and bounce back open.

Two black boots stride into the elevator, muddying Poppy’s clean escape. “I’ve tried to get your attention all morning,” Ian announces, as if she hasn’t noticed.

“Fantastic,” she says, but her dry mutter is lost on him. She presses the lobby button and holds her breath as they descend.

“Two words,” he begins as she cuts him off with a snort. How can he do this now? After everything? “Are you okay?” he asks, really looking at her for the first time since hijacking her elevator. Arriving at the bottom floor, it dings and Ian blinks, glancing around. “Where are you going?”

As if he just noticed that she was escaping from the office, his cloying presence.

“Lunch,” she snaps, hoping to deter further conversation. She shoulders past him, ignoring the firm warmth of his arm brushing hers. Ian, being Ian, doesn’t take the hint. He trails after her, closing the gap with a few long strides. Side by side, they march from the elevator to the parking garage.

“Where are we going?” he asks. She has to give it to him—he’s persistent. Always up for an adventure or a challenge. _And not much else,_ that niggling voice reminds her.

“I’m going out,” she says. If he notices her singular pronoun choice, he does not show it, trailing her across the garage. As they near her beat-up sedan, he reaches for her arm.

“Take my car,” he says, beaming generously. Once Poppy snorts, he wavers briefly, but fishes the key from his jeans pocket and drops it into her outstretched hand. “Just… drive careful, okay?”

She accelerates so fast out of the parking lot that the tires screech in protest against the pavement. Ian groans from the passenger seat. His white-knuckled grip on the handle above his seat almost makes up for his presence, in Poppy’s estimation.

They wind up parked on a cliff overlooking the ocean. Although Poppy hasn’t fled work in ages, the distress welling inside her gut today has prompted her to seek refuge in the place she used to escape when the office chafed, too small a second skin, back in the first year she uprooted her life on the whim of Ian Grimm. Never has she taken someone to this spot—in this whole bloody city, Poppy craves one place to call her own. One haven untouched by _Mythic Quest_. Yet here she sits, slumped over the wheel of the borrowed Charger, with Ian by her side.

Already Ian walks from the passenger seat to the rickety wooden staircase winding down the cliff face. “Come on, Poppy,” he calls, boyish delight illuminating his smile. Leave it to Ian to commandeer her escape. Caught in the tractor beam of his grin, she can only sulk in the car for so long before he’s tapping at her window, cajoling her until she wrenches the keys from the ignition and stuffs her hands into her pockets, following him down the worn steps to the sand.

As she watches his head bob in descent, the waves lapping at the shoreline and the wildflowers springing from crevasses in the cliff, she wonders how she always finds herself following him. Pride prickles with the wind through the thin fabric of her sweatshirt, so Poppy wedges herself between the railing and his sturdy form, assuming the lead. “You come here a lot?” he asks, wind whipping at his words.

She has to lean back for him to hear, hating the way her heart skips at the curiosity lining his brow. “Not anymore.”

“But you used to?”

He’s studying her—she can feel it—like a game mechanic primed for noodling. A puzzle to be solved and named and marketed to millions. Under different circumstances, she might enjoy the attention of a companion at the beach. On an afternoon like this one, with a man like Ian, she resents it and quickens her pace accordingly. Down the stairs she jogs, shoes slapping angrily against the wooden planks. He keeps pace without panting for breath. Unfair, how she must regulate the heaving of her chest as they reach the bottom in order to maintain a similarly unruffled appearance. No matter the arena, he always seems to have her beat.

When her boots kiss the final step farewell, Poppy unlaces them before plunging her toes into the sand. Ian doesn’t bother removing his, doesn’t break stride when his soles hit the sand. He outpaces her, reaching the receding surf before Poppy can catch up. Her shoes dangle helplessly from her hands. Then the first wave hits her toes, sloshes around her ankles, and all is right in her world, if only for a moment.

“You look happy,” he observes, so quietly she barely catches the words over the crash and slosh at her feet.

“I am,” she says because it’s true, if surprising—the place she calls her own, that she hoards for herself and no one else, has expanded effortlessly to fit two. There’s room for Ian on the shore, and still peace enough for her to find in the sea.

“Then you should come here more,” he suggests, letting the surf cascade over the toes of his boots. The casual wave of his hand, the appreciative glance at the horizon—his presumption grates. The space contracts. Poppy’s hands ball into fists and a pit yawns wide in her gut.

“If I didn’t spend all day cleaning up your messes, I would,” she snaps before she can suck in the sea-salt air and let it soothe her soul. 

“You mean collaborating, doing your job?” he fires back, brows raised as if to question the source of her intensity. The bracelets strangling his wrists quiver as he throws his arms up in exasperation, in mock-confusion.

“I’m not your favorite paintbrush,” she says. “I’m not a paintbrush, I’m a human. A human you asked to be your co-creative director. You asked me, Ian, not the other way around.”

That befuddled quirk of his eyebrows again. “I thought you wanted to share your ideas!”

“And I thought you wanted to work with me, not use me as a sounding board for your ideas. I should never have said yes. You’re better off with someone like Jo, or David. Someone who... properly appreciates your genius.”

He falls silent at the bite in her tone; only the caw of gulls and the swish of water remind Poppy that she can still hear. Her heartbeat eclipses the sounds of the beach until it roars louder than the tide. They stand like that, a few feet apart and a thousand miles away in worlds of their own.

When he sighs loud enough to wash away their frustration, Poppy can’t help but glance his way. Arms folded. Eyes squinting at the thin line between sky and sea. “I wanted you. I wanted you and your ideas, and only you. David can’t say no. Jo can’t look past my name. You’re the only one who...”

“Pushes back?” she offers, wrestling her mouth into a straight line. He can’t draw a smile out of her that easily, not like he craves. She can’t allow him to demand war and peace in the same breath.

“Sees me,” he corrects. “Hears me. Gets me.”

The words sting, saltwater flooding a cut, because Poppy so desperately wants them to be true. She yearns to believe the magic Ian’s words weave, and yet can’t shake the distrust that his speeches entail. Say yes, say sorry, and soon they’ll be back to squabbling over shovels and tossing around paintbrushes. Too cyclical, too predictable, too worn to the bone.

But she can’t hold it back. A trace of a smile seeps past her defenses. Ever the opportunist, Ian spots it and snatches it. “Here that?” he hollers to the gulls and crabs and distant pedestrians. “Poppy understands me! She forgives me! She is the best co-creative director this side of the Pacific!”

“Any side of the Pacific,” she mutters, but she’s smiling in earnest now. He laughs—it’s contagious—and when he picks her up by the legs and carves out a circle in the sky with a twirl so enthusiastic it leaves Poppy panting for breath after he sets her down. Phantom tingles radiate from her knees, a reminder of their triumphant spin onstage months before when Ian got caught up in victory and reached for her.

“The best,” he reaffirms as she adjusts her sweatshirt and he smooths his bracelets, and they shuffle for something to bridge the newly-spawned gulf widening between them. Poppy prays he mistakes the pink of her cheeks as a byproduct of laughing.

Here on some half-deserted beach in the middle of the workday, Ian reaches for her again, burying his head into her hair and resting his chin in the crook of her shoulder. The urge to pull away thrums through her veins, but she can’t move and she hates herself for it.

They stay like that, compressed in an embrace to fragile to support words, until the wind whips harder and the sea foams white. Only then can Poppy muster up the strength to pull away. Sand flings itself in the spaces that materialize between them, scratching her cheeks and catching in his beard. He opens his mouth—a question, a confession, Poppy will never know—and comes up spitting sand.

“Let’s get out of here,” she hollers, a chilly gust whisking away her voice so quickly that she’s not sure Ian hears it. But he responds, spinning from her and again outpacing her so quickly that Poppy’s not sure he can hear her huff. Then he pauses, swiveling over his shoulder to grab her hand, and resumes the same punishing pace again. Despite the cold rings, his hand is warm. It engulfs hers.

She doesn’t let go: not up the staircase, creaking in the wind, not across the parking lot until they reach the safety of his Charger. They stamp off the sand from their boots. She tosses him the keys and slides into the passenger seat. He turn the heater on high, yet makes no move to drive.

Poppy stares out the windshield and watches the frenzied tide. Their hands detangled in the process of getting in the car. Now his flutter awkwardly, from lap to steering wheel and back again. She laces her fingers together at the first twitch of his thumbs, leaving no opening and yet he finds one—he makes one—in true Ian Grimm fashion.

“Why do you do this to me?” she murmurs without pulling away. Not _why did you follow me_ , or _why are you touching me._

His thumb maps worlds between her knuckles, but he doesn’t answer. For once he’s speechless and Poppy can’t decide whether it’s irritation or relief that sends goosebumps prickling up her spine. She shivers. He watches, imperceptibly attentive save for the crook of his mouth. If she hadn’t spent the last eight years as his partner, she might mistake it for disinterest. Yet they know each other too well. She knows he’s watching, just as he knows she’s rattled, far beyond her customary panic that precedes every patch release.

“Well, don’t just stare at me.” Like the tide, her words foam and rip at the ground under their feet. “Say something! Say something, Ian, with that big mouth of yours! Why has it shut up now, for the first time in years? No need to start listening now, the time to listen has passed ages ago!”

His snort cuts to her heart. “Why do I do this to you?” Under his stare she feels stupid, exposed. His fingers retreat from hers, spinning the rings chained to their necks. “You’re the one doing things, Pop. This is all you.”

“If you think for one minute that I’m going to sit here and listen to your bull—”

“See what I mean?” he asks, finally facing her full-on. The dark hunger in his eyes sets her skin prickling anew. “Around you I feel...”

“Stuck-up?”

“No.”

“Arrogant?”

“No.”

She’s pushing it—by now he should’ve snapped, or at least groaned in protest, but she can’t leave the boss unprovoked. “Self-important?”

“Grounded,” he says too softly for Poppy to be certain she isn’t trapped in one of her dreams, part-nightmare, part-fantasy, altogether too dangerous to dwell on in the light of day. “More certain. I know who you are, and you know me. You know me and you’re still here.”

She could shut this down—one quip and his big fat mouth would shut, never to open again like this. They could stay on the shore, keep the car in parked, return to friendly sniping and banter too comfortable to be written off as a working relationship. Or they could jump into the water and let it sweep them away, shift the car into drive and press down the gas, acknowledge the tension underscoring their partnership before it consumes them and spits out only ash.

Poppy doesn’t know when to quit. “Of course I’m still here.”

His fingers skim the scar on her thumb, the ridges of her wrist. “And that’s why of course I love you.”

When she first met Ian Grimm eight years ago, Poppy swore she had never met a man so casually self-absorbed. She swore he only loved himself, his ideas, the reverence that creating _Mythic Quest_ generated from his employees and players alike. He loved noodling; he loved the Raven’s Banquet update. But then he grew to love the shovel and sharing an office with her. Maybe he grew to love her, too.

His hands wrap around her back. They span the space between her shoulder blades, nestling into a spot too familiar for Poppy’s liking. In an effort to slow the revelations, to throw up some distance between the man wreaking havoc on her universe, she hurls her hands against his chest and pushes.

“Don’t—”

“Don’t push me away,” he says. “Like dick drawings in game, you can’t get rid of me.”

Like dick drawings in game. How romantic of him—how _Ian_ of him.

When he leans in until their noses touch, Poppy knows they’ve reached a checkpoint. So she pauses, savoring the warmth of his skin against hers and the thrum of his heart pulsing under her palms. One move, and it’s game over or level up, without the proper equipment or guideposts to show her the way.

When she sews shut the gap between them, she wonders if she ever had a choice at all. Ian tastes of salt and whiskey, copper and wine. Metallic, warm, inevitable. Railroaded into a future of their own making, Poppy grins against his lips—then she feels him respond in kind, mouth parting and teeth brushing tongue and a scalding sense of rightness trickling to their stomachs.

They break apart when she leans into the embrace and whacks her knee on the shifter. Although she can’t see the skin purpling under the leg of her trouser, Poppy senses that it left a mark. When she looks up from her knee and catches sight of Ian, satisfaction radiates lightning-quick from chest to toe.

Her mark on Ian is unmistakable. His hair is mussed, unusually rumpled and throughly delicious. A quiet red flush runs the length of his neck, under his beard, and he wears a shit-eating grin so wide that Poppy can’t help but roll her eyes when it only expands further.

“Five months,” he says, shifting the car into reverse. He backs the car from its parking space facing the ocean and back onto the freeway unspooling towards the office.

“What?”

“The day I met you, I gave it five months until you kissed me. Guess I was off by a few years.”

Her cheeks flame; she shoves him with her elbow as the Charger accelerates under his hungry command. “You did not.”

“Did too.” He’s far too smug, but Poppy finds herself returning the smile. “You’re worth the wait.”

“That’s what you tell all of them, huh?” She means to tease, but the words land all wrong, angles and sharp edges instead of smoothness and light.

The grin disappears, his eyes still trained on the road but sharp and dark, no trace of laughter. “Only you.”

She can’t find the words to reply, but her hand finds his and weaves its way into his grasp. Their hands stay like that, pressed together over the shifter until they reach the office and shut off the car.

In the elevator, Ian looks down at their joined palms and jerks away. “Should we—?”

“No,” she says, squeezing softly. “Let them stare.”

It’s a miracle they make it up to the seventh floor from the parking garage, an even bigger miracle that they finish the workday in the same office without locking the door and making up for lost time. They drive home together, leaving Poppy’s car in the employee lot, and although they arrive to work together the next morning, no one says a word.

Sure, Jo stares a beat too long, a scowl rippling across her forehead. Sure, C.W. winks with a bit too much gusto, raising his glass to congratulate Poppy once Ian looks away. Sure, David stutters more than usual when trying to greet them, his gaze darting from the distance between their hips to the softness Poppy can’t conceal in her eyes, the cautiously confident roll of Ian’s shoulders—but no one says a word.

Poppy likes it that way.

**Author's Note:**

> There you have it, folks—two emotionally repressed creatives finally hashing it out before driving the whole office wild. :)


End file.
